Microsoft: We're partnering really closely with Qualcomm

Over at Gamasutra, they had an nice interview with Kevin Unangst, Microsoft's senior director of PC and mobile gaming, and Brian Seitz, senior marketing manager for Windows Phone 7.

The topic was gaming and there were a few interesting bits of information, the first found in this blog's headline:

We're partnering really closely with Qualcomm so they're going to be the chip of choice... It will be a good experience with developers," says Brian Seitz, senior marketing manager for Windows Phone 7.

Some much for nVidia's Tegra2 or ARM Cortex A8 /"Hummingbird", eh?

Other things which we're sort of already knew:

Two tiers for games: more professional Xbox Live Arcade and regular Marketplace games; the former is exceptional quality with high standards, the latter anyone can develop on. This also means you won't need an XBLA account to play all games on WP7

Microsoft helps set the prices for games; trying to avoid 'race to the bottom' for pricing to protect developer's interests

Tiered pricing for games, like the Xbox console

...it's just the beginning of what we're going to do with multiplayer."

"...this can be a great alternative to the DS and PSP, as much as we think [it can be to] the iPhone and the Droid"

Interesting stuff, though we're a little uneasy with the Qualcomm thing as..well, lets not bring up the past. We're curious to see if any hardware vendor will use non-Qualcomm chipsets, guess we'll have to wait and see.